Making art in the studio, listening to music or NPR and thinking, all the time thinking. It could be about red versus orange or politics or the world collapsing around us or growing old or (most probably) wondering what to have for dinner.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Days Like This

Some days when I'm in the studio I make all the "right" decisions. Things just seem to go smoothly and I'm in the flow of it all, moving toward a conclusion or completion. Other days - such as today - I'm just in my own way and feeling too scattered to get anything done or even make a good start.

On the highway to studio hell (not really)

I began five or six different pieces today and was dissatisfied with all of them. I started building something and put two pieces of wood in the wrong place three different times! All I could do was laugh at myself and be happy that I had noticed before the glue dried and it was too late to move them.

One side wasn't talking to the other - or maybe they were both talking at once.

Days like today used to worry me because I thought I had lost "it" - that magical essence that allowed me to make art. But after many years I know that I was just overtired and unfocused. I started a new job (project) this week that drained my energy and took away too much studio time. And there was my poor brain today - stuck between hemispheres: the left brain being the bookkeeping I've been doing all week and the right brain being me foundering in the studio.

So I just kept going, moving from one thing to another, trying to make a good move. I was working on one of the special projects New England Wax has taken on: using encaustic with paper. I didn't like the size and the paper didn't allow me to work the way I usually do, so I had to invent something new and it just wasn't happening. Finally, when I was just ready to go home, I think I came up with something that had some potential. We'll see.

Some Good News: I was invited to participate in the 5th Annual Encaustic Invitational at the Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson, AZ in March. Wouldn't I like to take a trip out there for the opening! March is a great time to leave New England - for any reason, and I'd like the opportunity of visiting Tucson. I hear it's a great place.

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What am I reading?

I'm always reading something and now it's another one of Robert Caro's volumes of Lyndon Johnson's biography. "Passage of Power" is the fourth volume in this monumental series and covers the years 1958 to 1964. This period of Johnson's life was full of extremes of power - from the peak as Majority Leader of the Senate, then fading as he failed to actively campaign for the presidential nomination in 1960. Once he joined Kennedy on the 1960 Democratic ticket, his southern connections gave Kennedy the win, but Johnson sank into powerless oblivion and became the butt of jokes by "the Harvards." On Kennedy's death, Johnson ascended to the presidency and experienced another series of extremes of political power.

Caro is a master of biography and is always interesting and informative. I recommend this volume (and series) to anyone who follows politics and wants to know some background on how we got where we are today.